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French minors barred from horror film 'Saw 3'

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PARIS - In a rare ruling, France's minister of culture decided on Tuesday to bar minors from seeing the horror movie "Saw 3" after personally viewing the film which he said contained "incessant and unbearable sadism."

In a statement, Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres said he had watched it following a decision by the film classification commission to restrict it to over-18s.

He said "the violence and incessant and unbearable sadism of scenes explicitly linked to physical and moral torture fully justified the decision to ban the film (for minors)."

The 18-plus rating is used only in exceptional cases judged too extreme for the 16-plus rating normally applied to mainstream films containing sex or strong violence.

It was applied, for example, to the controversial 2000 revenge movie "Baise-moi" (known in English as "Rape me").